The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

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After the loss of a countermodel for capitalism - which socialism, in
its real, existing form had presented until its collapse -
alternative concepts for economic and social development are facing
difficulties at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the
industrial nations, "alternatives" are only broadly discussed when
they do not question the existing power relations of the capitalist
system and representative democracies. Other socio-economic
approaches are, on the other hand, labeled utopian, devalued, and
excluded from serious discussion if even considered at all.

In the framework of the theme-specific installation, "Alternative
Economics, Alternative Societies," the focus is on diverse concepts,
models, and utopias for alternative economies and societies which all
share a rejection by the capitalist system of rule. For each concept,
an interview was carried out from which an English video was
produced. In the exhibition, these single-channel 20 to 37 minute
videos are each shown on a separate monitor thus forming the central
element of the artistic installation.

The project presents alternative social and economic models such as
"Inclusive Democracy" from Takis Fotopoulos (GB/GR), "Participatory
Economy" from Michael Albert (U.S.A.), and "Free Cooperation" from
Christoph Spehr (G). Nancy Folbre (U.S.A.) speaks about her concept
of "Caring Labor," and Marge Piercy (U.S.A.) discusses the
feminist-anarchist utopias of her social fantasies. As interesting
historical models, the workers' self-management in Yugoslavia in the
sixties and seventies are thematized in the exhibition by Todor
Kuljic (SCG) and the workers' collectives during the Spanish Civil
War (1936-38) by Salom=E9 Molt=F3 (E).

Chosen for each video is one quotation significant for the
alternative model that it presents. The quote is placed directly on
the floor of the exhibition room as a several meter long text piece.
This floor lettering, made from adhesive film, leads exhibition
visitors directly to the corresponding videos, yet the quotes also
overlap one another and subdivide the room into different sections.

The exhibition project will be continually expanded in the coming
years through further economic and social concepts. These form a
non-hierarchically arranged pool, which offers stimulus and
suggestions for contemplation of social alternatives and
possibilities for action.

The installation "Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies" is
realized within the following exhibitions:

"Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies" is a project realized in
the framework of republicart (www.republicart.net), produced by Galerija
Skuc, Ljubljana and the Kunstraum der Universitat Luneburg.

The project is supported by the EU-Program Culture 2000 and the BKA
section for the arts.

Joshua Davis (http://www.joshuadavis.com) and Mark Tribe
(http://nothing.org) are teaching a workshop on Web Animation for
Artists at Anderson Ranch this summer. Intended for artists with
intermediate to advance web skills, this workshop will combine an
introduction to the history and theory of net art with a focus on
ActionScript, the programming language built into Flash.

Anderson Ranch Art Center is a non-profit visual arts community located
on a ranch near Aspen, Colorado in the Rocky Mountains. Each summer,
Anderson Ranch offers workshops on a range of subjects, including Art
History & Critical Studies, Ceramics, Digital Imaging, Furniture &
Woodworking, Painting & Drawing, Photography and Sculpture. This is the
second time Joshua and Mark will teach this Web Animation Workshop at
Anderson Ranch.

The workshop will take place June 28 - July 2 2004. For more information
and to register, call +1 970 923 3181 or go to:

This e-mail is an invitation to collaborate in the project Re:<o><o>
Re:<o><o> is a project in progress first shown at the "Comme des Congres
Gallery" in Calgary, Alberta, Canada made up of a selection of pieces
from artists from around the world. This project is an investigation of
the possibilities of art creation using electronic-mail as a tool for
new artistic explorations. The selected pieces will be included in the
collection of e-mail art that will be presented at "Access Artist Run
Center" in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from January 24 to
February 14, 2004.

Director
School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, Canada

The Director will lead one of the newest and most dynamic schools in
Canada. He or she will help mold the future of a school that combines
arts and technology in an interdisciplinary setting. The School has the
goal to become an international leader in its field and the Director
will have the opportunity to take a major role in its continuing
development.

The School of Interactive Arts and Technology has programs in
interaction design, performance and media art, art and design technology
and is developing new offerings in related emerging areas. The
successful candidate will have an accomplished record of scholarship and
teaching in at least one of these areas. He or she will have proven
leadership skills in an academic setting and have demonstrated
accomplishments in a collaborative environment. PhD or equivalent
required.

Simon Fraser University is committed to principles of equity in
employment.

If you are interested, submit your qualifications to Roger Welch or
Joanna Lee at:

>From movies/television and computer/video games to political posturing
and gangster rap, weapons have become as "embedded" in our everyday
lives as US journalists were in the military during the "major combat"
phase of the 2003 Iraq war. "Stand By Your Guns" confronts us with the
ubiquity of guns and how violent simulations translate into real life
shootings. It is an absurdist piece that both glorifies the weapon and
masquerades as an entertainment arcade.

BIOGRAPHY

Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian performance and media artist who lives
and works in New York City. Her web projects include "Things are Okay"
and "Home Like No Place" which were produced in residency at Trinity
Square Video in Toronto, and La Chambre Blanche Gallery in Québec City.
"Home Like No Place" was featured at La Biennale de Montreal 2002. "Me
and Billy Bob" was launched in May 2003 and "Ivy League" is part of
StudioXX's Virtual Garden project. "Advice Lounge," created in residency
at Videographe and featured at FCMM in Montreal, will be performed live
at Saskatoons Spasm New Media Festival in Spring 2004. Mcdonald
received a Canada Council for the Arts Grant for the creation of four
new media projects in 2003. Her projects have been featured at
Kanonmedia (Vienna), Emmedia (Calgary), Hive Projects (Toronto), Rhizome
(New York), Javamuseum, CIAC (Canada), DIAN (Germany), the Web Biennial
in Istanbul 2003, and the Centre d'Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie.
Mcdonald teaches computer art at Pace University where she co-directs
the Pace Digital Gallery.

This month artport features pages from Ken Perlin's "sketchbook" -- 77
studies and applets that explore possibilities for virtual behaviors,
textures, interfaces and data visualizations. The applets include
"kinetic sculptures" that make animated characters emote; intuitive
design widgets; adventures in robot path planning; a simple
visualization tool for the topology of neuron connections in the human
brain; an idea for a zoomable web client for cell-phones; as well as a
"Buckyballet."

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"...virtual image spaces of the computer... (are) not the revolutionary
innovation its protagonists are fond of interpreting it to be. The idea
of virtual reality only appears to be without a history; in fact, it
rests firmly on historical art traditions, which belong to a
discontinuous movement of seeking illusionary image spaces."
Grau, Virtual Art, p. 339

In this statement, Oliver Grau sums up what is probably the most
significant contribution this book makes to the study of New Media Art.
With many instances of novel technologies, creative or otherwise,
proponents have asserted that current practices constitute the pinnacle
of human knowledge to date or represent a degree of novelty that
distances them from history. The examination of the historical context
of technological media, especially in the arts, has been scant to date.
In this book, Grau brings a refreshing perspective to the topic by
illustrating that the genre of immersive spaces has been actively
pursued since classical times, and, I might even argue, since the caves
of Lascaux were painted. This approach refutes the Fukuyama-esque
assertion that new media art is either separate from history or a
terminal point of the same. Conversely, Grau points to Adorno's
admonitions about placing contemporary art in a continuous history,
suggesting that there is nothing new under the sun. What needs to be
considered here are the points of difference in the sites throughout
history, and this is one of Grau's other points.

Grau begins his analysis of immersive spaces throughout pre-modern times
at the Roman Villa Dei Misteri at Pompeii, an initiation site for the
sect of Bacchus, and moves on to Bismarck's commissioning of the grand
panorama of The Battle of Sedan, which was completed in 1883. From
Pompeii to Berlin, Grau constructs a narrative of the context of the
culture, politics, and representative function of the various spaces --
from the ecstatic to the devotional to the propagandistic -- and reveals
how the various techniques of construction reflected the agendas of the
constructors. The idea that new technologies have largely served to
inscribe agendas of power upon the masses is not new, but used as an
analytical context for this subject from ancient Rome to today raises
important questions about the social function of immersive spaces.

>From Sedan, Grau takes a relatively brief sojourn through Modernist
immersive spaces, including Monet's panorama in Giverny, Prampolini's
polydimensional Futurism, Schwitters' Merz theatre, the Cineorama, the
Futurama, Heilig's famed Sensorama, leading up to the contemporary IMAX
theatre. In his (rather brief) exposition of these modern spaces of
immersion and illusion, there is a distinct shift from the panoramic
rendering to the expansion of the cinematic as space of illusion, and to
Sutherland's development of the Head-Mounted-Display, which brings the
reader to the contemporary era.

To contextualize the issues of immersion in contemporary virtual works,
Grau considers numerous pieces of virtual art, including Davies' Osmose,
Benayoun's World Skin, Naimark's Be Now Here, as well as other spaces
that consider the role of immersion in the representation of identity,
the political, and the monumental. In many of these cases, such as
Shaw's Place 2000, and Benayoun's World Skin, the agendas of power are
translated quite clearly from antiquity. However, in the case of
Benayoun, this is done more subversively as the virtual 'photographers,'
in a direct metaphor taken from Marey's photographic gun, literally
create 'holes' in the landscape through their act of taking snapshots of
the landscape. Grau relates this metaphor once again and brings the
virtual into a historical context quite nicely while illustrating
contextual differences in the cultural and technological functions of
the work.

The remaining segments consist of sections on telepresence and genetic
art, covering most notably Penny's Traces and Kac's GFP Bunny. Although
meticulously researched and well framed in the rubric of illusionism,
Grau falls victim to the fin-de-millennium tendency in new media
scholarship to be overly inclusive in light of a movement (i.e. New
Media) which is so chimeric and multifaceted as to make any
comprehensive analysis difficult at best. Although Grau does wonderfully
at making a case for the inclusion of the telepresent and the genetic in
his text, this seems to come at some cost to expansion on the rich
history of immersion in the 20th century. Likewise, the sociopolitical
analysis constructed in the pre-modern section shifts to a markedly
theoretical treatment in the postmodern era. Although this may be
indicative of the cultural framing of the periods involved, or the fact
that the book is a translation of a recent revision, I felt a desire to
read Grau's analysis of the differences between the pre- and postmodern
spaces of immersion; not for the purpose of merging current VR into a
unified historical discourse, but for examining the issues of difference
amongst the various installations, so one could see the continuities and
discontinuities between the various periods.

Virtual Art is a landmark volume in that it is one of the first to begin
placing new media works into a historical framework with a sensitivity
to the shifts in expression that are evident from antiquity to the
present day. In an era that often considers history to be measured in
months or decades, Virtual Art lends a sense of perspective and insight
that is sorely needed in new media discourse. As a reference work, the
massive bibliography is truly impressive, and is worth the price of the
book in itself. However, if there were to be further incarnations of the
book, I would love to read more on Modern-era immersive spaces, and have
more comparative analysis between the pre- and postmodern while staying
firmly in the realm of VR and the panoramic.

Perhaps I might seem a bit critical in places, but it is only because
the book held my attention for over three hundred pages over a period of
three months. Grau has created a volume that will likely be used as a
canonical text in the study of virtual reality for some years to come,
and will probably not gather much dust on my shelf, as it will be a
valuable resource in my further research of the past and present of
virtual reality.

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Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard
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the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council
on the Arts, a state agency.

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Feisal Ahmad (feisal AT rhizome.org). ISSN:
1525-9110. Volume 9, number 2. Article submissions to list AT rhizome.org
are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art
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